Paying $4k a month for a huge apartment on the same Hell's Kitchen block as the Port Authority is a great idea.

Paying rather less, to live somewhere rather smaller in Hell's Kitchen, is smarter.

A short-term lease in boring but central Murray Hill is the best choice for us.

Living in a damp, rat infested windowless dungeon in the East Village, for $3800 a month, where our meth-head would-be neighbour was asleep on her doorstep at 12 noon, is a bad idea. Despite its proximity to Katz's and Porchetta.

Living with an old lady's tchotchkes and redundant piano is worth it for the money we'll save, and the Chelsea location.

A posh building in Gramercy Park with lots of space and a nice doorman is the best place to be.

We absolutely can afford to pay 5 months' rent in advance for a charming, bijou pad in leafy heart of the West Village.

We should stay in lovely sunny beachy Malibu. TLOML can just commute to NY. NY can stay a 6 hour flight away, and we can stay here, on the beach, with Geoffrey's and Malibu Seafood, and the potential of sighting Dick Van Dyke in our local Ralph's.

We should sign a 10 month lease on a small Chelsea apartment we have never seen, in a lovely shiny building we have never seen...

Most of those judgments were firmly established after much discussion, sometimes involving financial spreadsheets, decision making matrices*, and careful poring over maps. They were then reversed, some almost immediately. Talk about a whirlwind. We were like country fools being pulled this-a-way and that-a-way by the bright lights and hustle and bustle of the big smoke.

Judgments 4 and 9 were made in mere moments. And they still stand. I guess sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

Now we have 4 short weeks to drink the contents of the wine fridge, dispose of the inessentials (lucky LA Goodwill) and pack the rest.... Yikes.

*I love using the tools of my consultancy trade ouside of work. Witness the colour coded (for location and the type of activity, obv.) post-it itinerary I created when my dear friends Soph and Tom came to LA for 5 short days. Pity TLOML when I Gant chart the heck out of our wedmin...

2 comments:

Just thinking about what a massive geek management consultant I am... the main reason I liked the boring Murray Hill place so much was that I liked the agent. The reason I liked the agent was, really and truly, because I liked the way he made a nice neat grid for the various costs of the various units (not just a scrawl). It was like a lovely decision-making matrix all of its own. Shoot me now!

Transplanted to Los Angeles and then New York by The Love Of My Life (we’ll call him TLOML) - till I dragged him back to Britain. Writing about the cultural chasm, and our return to LA as a family of 3.